Not Much Time WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM Weekend Writing Warriors

A fun way to sample new books and find new writers! Here’s the link to the Weekend Writing Warriors central page, so you can visit all the participants sharing excerpts today…

The luxury ship Nebula Dream has suffered a middle of the night catastrophe in space. My hero, Nick Jameson, has fought his way to the nearest lifeboat and found chaos. Some creative editing and punctuation has occurred. As he’s just about finished loading the lifeboat, businesswoman Mara Lyrae arrives, much to his relief. But she refuses to get on the lifeboat, as there are children in need of rescuing…after a brief argument, Nick sends the lifeboat on its way. He and Mara set out to rescue the children, accompanied by Khevan, a D’nvannae Brother (think bodyguard/assassin sworn to serve an alien goddess).

This snippet is after they’ve reached the family’s cabin and discovered a growing hull breach. Nick and Khevan have cleared a tunnel through the debris trapping the children, and Nick has crawled through. When he gets to the tight space that comprises what’s left of the bedroom, the bulkhead is plainly about to give way soon. I’ve done very creative punctuation and some editing:

Not much time before the hull goes and we go with it. Sweeping the pale light over the room, he found the children huddled together against one overturned bed. “Hi, remember me? I’m Nick – I was on the shuttle with you guys a few days ago.”

Paolo nodded in the gloom, rising and dragging his sister with him, chubby hand clamped around her wrist. She eyed Nick dubiously, left thumb firmly planted in her mouth, the other hand clutching the big teddy bear.

“Okay, Paolo, you seem like a pretty level-headed trooper,” Nick said, squatting to be at eye level with the boy, “We need to get out of here as fast as possible – you see the outer wall there?”

Paolo nodded, “It’s going to break, isn’t it?”

The Story
Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he’ll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets.

All his plans vaporize when the ship suffers a wreck of  Titanic proportions. Captain and crew abandon ship, leaving the 8000 passengers stranded without enough lifeboats and drifting unarmed in enemy territory. Aided by Mara, Nick must find a way off the doomed ship for himself and several other innocent people before deadly enemy forces reach them or the ship’s malfunctioning engines finish ticking down to self destruction.

But can Nick conquer the demons from his past that tell him he’ll fail these innocent people just as he failed to save his Special Forces team? Will he outpace his own doubts to win this vital race against time?